


Ancient Friendship

by bunn



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Beleriand, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hithlum, Laws and Customs Among the Eldar, M/M, Sharing a Bed, The Noldor, Ósanwe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-30 23:21:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10887030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunn/pseuds/bunn
Summary: Questionable attempt at depicting m/m elf marriage and sex from a  Laws and Customs Among the Eldar and Ósanwe-kenta perspective.“You surely aren’t going to insist on silver and gold rings and a year’s waiting to be sure?” Fingon asked, amused.“At our age? And then to ask Manwë and Varda as witnesses and call on the name of the One?” Maedhros rolled his eyes. “I think I’d rather not, under the circumstances.”





	Ancient Friendship

The council meeting ended late, after a great deal of discussion and a little too much to drink to compensate for the awkwardness that came with Maedhros being there for the first time without a crown, and his uncle, for the first time with one. 

Fingon caught his cousin’s eye, as his father finally left the room. Maedhros came over to him, and, a little to Fingon’s surprise, put an arm around his shoulders — the left, the handless right was still in a sling — as they headed for the door. 

"I'm glad that's over," Maedhros said, tired and leaning a little. He still felt thin, Fingon thought. 

“Wait till morning to ride back to your camp?” he suggested, since Maedhros seemed to want to resume their old easy closeness, from the years before trouble had come to the Noldor and every conversation had become tense. Fingon had missed it, too. “You look worn out. And your escort are probably asleep already. ” 

Maedhros gave him a weary look. “Please,” he said “If you can spare me a corner to collapse in for a while. Just at the moment, that sounds wonderful.” 

The makeshift camp on the shores of Lake Mithrim barely had beds for everyone who lived there yet, let alone guest accommodation, so Fingon steered Maedhros to his own quarters and sat him among the furs and sealskins. 

“I didn’t mean to steal your bed!” Maedhros protested. 

“You won’t, unless you really can’t put up with my snoring and kick me out,” Fingon said, bluntly. “You did say a corner. On the Grinding Ice, we got used to sleeping together. It was too cold to do anything else. And we’re still short of space.” Maedhros nodded and looked down, tired and pale and clearly hurting. Fingon felt slightly ashamed of himself, but not ashamed enough to volunteer to sleep on the floor. Hithlum was warmer than the Ice, but it wasn’t warm enough for that. 

He got out the water jug and bowl, washed, brushed out his hair and changed into a nightshirt. It felt very good to have fresh clothes again. Getting supplies of wool and flax and setting up spinning wheels and looms to make cloth had been one of the most urgent things they had done in Hithlum — far more urgent than building spare beds for exhausted cousins. 

He found when he turned back to look at Maedhros on the bed that he had fallen quietly asleep, curled neatly around his missing hand like a cat. Fingon considered him for a moment, quietly pulled off Maedhros’s boots, tucked blankets around him, then climbed into the bed too, and went to sleep.

Next morning in the dim early light that filtered in through the improvised oilcloth windows, he blinked half-awake to find that Maedhros, catlike, had expanded in the night. He now seemed to fill most of the bed, his pale freckled face inches from Fingon’s and his long legs sprawled across him. 

He was hard, too, nudging up against Fingon’s thigh, though his eyes were still closed and his breathing slow and regular. That was a thing that happened sometimes, on the Ice, when you slept together for the warmth, though less so as the journey had gone on and they had all become more tired and worn. You ignored it or joked about it. That was how it went. 

Fingon cautiously moved a leg to push Maedhros off him. Maedhros’s grey eyes opened and looked at him, and Fingon found a thrill running through him, an unexpected shiver, like diving into clear water in the sunlight. Strange, that, because this was only his old friend Maedhros, after all, the ally of his childhood, with whom he had once shared a thousand private jokes. And yet... Fingon could feel himself growing hard in turn against Maedhros’s leg, as Maedhros looked curiously at him. His breath came quicker.

“The first time I’ve managed to wake like this since we left Aman,” Maedhros said to him, and there was a note of laughter in his voice, and something deeper and darker too. 

Maedhros’s hand was folded in front of him. He moved it just a little to touch Fingon’s lips, and that felt strange too, every detail of the fingertip very clear and sharp. Fingon caught his breath. Then, very deliberately, he looked into Maedhros’s eyes and licked the fingertip. 

“Do you want...?” he asked, not quite sure what he was asking, but Maedhros seemed to know, because he said “Yes!” His eyes had gone very wide. Fingon kissed him.

Maedhros’s lips were strong and warm and he was breathing fast too, kissing him back with a wild enthusiasm and pulling him in with his good arm, and Maedhros’s body was warm and hard against him. Now Fingon’s mind was reaching out to Maedhros with a sleepy instinctive hopefulness, wanting, hoping, and found Maedhros reaching urgently back. 

Then Maedhros pulled away. Fingon reached out, clumsy with sleep, to pull him back, and caught Maedhros’s injured arm. Maedhros flinched, and pulled his other hand back to protect his wrist, sitting up. 

“I’m sorry! Are you hurt?” Fingon asked, contrite. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. The hastily-built shelters by the lake were not very sound-proof. 

“I am all right. Or will be. Give me a moment,” Maedhros said, pale. 

Fingon rolled over and sat next to him on the edge of the bed. He looked at Maedhros sideways. “I enjoyed that. Are we going to do this?” 

“I did too. But, you know, it isn’t done, to wed a cousin.” Maedhros looked sideways back at him speculatively. 

“Pfft! It’s not done to marry twice, like our grandfather. Yet here we are.”

“It’s not done to kill or steal or leave half your family stranded in a frozen desert either,” Maedhros said, more seriously. 

Fingon grimaced. “No. Yet here you are, and so am I. Apparently the rules are flexible.”

“You kissed me first,” Maedhros said.

“It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“But not now?” 

Fingon gave him a long, thoughtful look. Maedhros had regained his colour and was no longer cradling his injured arm in such obvious discomfort. Good. “In fact, it seems an even better idea, now. I can see many arguments in favour and very few against.”

“I can think of arguments against,” Maedhros said, frowning “My oath. My brothers. The way our friendship faltered when the lies came between us. The fact that I offered yesterday to take control of the Eastern frontier, and your father gave you Dor-lómin here in the west.” 

“Why did you kiss me back, then? You never do anything without a plan.” 

Maedhros laughed and shifted to rub at his shoulder. “A foul calumny! I do sometimes. You are very beautiful. And you are alive, and I am alive, and despite everything, you came across the Ice and found me on the mountain. Those would all be excellent reasons to kiss you, even if I hadn’t spent so many years wishing that I’d kissed you when I had the chance.”

“Really?” Fingon asked, surprised. “It never occurred to me to kiss you before!” 

“That’s why I didn’t. Stupid of me, really.” 

“It was. We could have got on with things long before any of the other arguments came up. Not that I think any of your reasons are valid. Your brothers will do as you tell them; they always do eventually. We all want to fight Morgoth anyway. A union between us would be a sign of reconciliation between our houses, if you want to be political about it.” 

Fingon paused, thinking of that moment on the mountain when he had prayed for help and been answered beyond hope. “You and me together, against the world,” he said. “That’s how it was always supposed to be.”

“And may no new grief divide us?” Maedhros gave him an unhappy glance. “I should have refused to leave you there, when we took the ships. I wanted to, but... It was too late, by the time we got to Losgar.”

“Yes, you should have.” Fingon took his hand. “I’m willing to gamble that you won’t do it again.”

Maedhros smiled at him and Fingon felt that shiver run through him again, soul to soul, reaching out, almost touching but not quite. “Hard to steal ships twice once they are ashes! But I really do have to go east. If we stay here there’s bound to be dissent again.” 

Fingon shrugged. “I shall be patrolling Ard-galen, and you the plains of Lothlann: we’re bound to see each other often. My father wants you to come to Hithlum regularly so we can all take counsel together. It shouldn’t be too hard. Then once we kill Morgoth...”

Maedhros laughed, incredulous. “‘Once we kill Morgoth’?! Really? I love you, Fingon.” 

“Of course. And I love you. I knew that anyway, but now, I discover, I like kissing you too. You definitely should have suggested it sooner.” Fingon leaned in and kissed him on the mouth again, cautiously, so as not to jar Maedhros’s arm, and then more enthusiastically as Maedhros leaned into him. He put his arm around Maedhros’s waist.

“A moment,” Maedhros said, turning his head away, though his eyes were bright, and he was breathing fast again. 

“What? You said you’d wanted to for years!”

“I have, and I do! I thought of you... I have had some time for thinking about you, recently, even if the circumstances were ...not otherwise ideal. But...”

“You surely aren’t going to insist on silver and gold rings and a year’s waiting to be sure?” Fingon asked, amused.

“At our age? And then to ask Manwë and Varda as witnesses and call on the name of the One?” Maedhros rolled his eyes. “I think I’d rather not, under the circumstances.” He hesitated. “Unless you want to?” 

Fingon grinned at him. “I think we’ve had Manwë’s blessing already; it’s not everyone that gets a personal eagle. And our mothers aren’t here to call on Varda or give their permission.” He thought about it for a moment. “I think we should call on the One, though. That feels like the really essential part of things.”

“You do it, then,” Maedhros said looking uncomfortable. “I don’t think He’ll want to be talking to me again.”

“Oh no,” Fingon said. “No you don’t. I’m not letting you get away with that. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it properly, and you’re doing it too. You named the One for your father and the Silmarils. You can name Him for me, too.”

“We named Him to doom us all to everlasting darkness,” Maedhros said, looking tired again. “You don’t want to be tied to that.”

“Yes, I know. I was there, too, remember? It’s only if you fail. Which you won’t. And anyway, you’ll be tied to me, just as much as me to you. Name Him for joy, like you did for woe, and if it ever comes down to it — which it won’t — we’ll find out which is stronger.”

Maedhros put his head on one side and gave him a look of amazement. “Fingon the Valiant. You really are determined to save me, aren’t you?” 

“Yes. Obviously. I like to do a job properly.” 

Maedhros laughed. “All right then.” 

They said the words to one another quietly, sitting there together companionably on the bed, holding hands. 

“To thee, my love, I pledge my troth, in joy unto the ending of the world. Our word hear thou, Eru Allfather!” 

“Well, that’s done,” Fingon said. It seemed impossible to stop smiling with such a fountain of happiness bubbling inside him. “Can I kiss you again now, or do you have further objections?”

Maedhros threw his head back and laughed at him. “It wasn’t that I had objections! It’s only that I have just this one pair of breeches with me, and I’d prefer not to ride back with them embarrassingly stained!”

“Oh, I see!” Fingon said, laughing too. He leaned in and kissed Maedhros on the cheek. Joy was echoing through him like harpsong, and laughter seemed the only reasonable response. “Can I help you take them off?”

“Please do!” Maedhros said, and lay back so that Fingon could get to the laces. “Since you chopped my hand off, thus making the whole operation of lacing and unlacing so much more difficult, it seems only fair for you to help.”

“I can see I shall never hear the last of that,” he said, running his hands across Maedhros’s thighs, and then tracing the shape of him, exploring, because now he could.

Maedhros gulped and pushed up against his hands, trembling. “You can make it up to me,” he said. His voice was not quite steady. Fingon laughed and stroked him again through the breeches, enjoying the way he inhaled sharply and his body answered to Fingon’s touch, before he peeled the clothes off. 

He took off his own nightshirt, too. Then he sat back for a moment to look. Maedhros was still too thin. You could count his ribs, and see how his shoulder was twisted out of shape. But he was still beautiful, long and lean. He caught Fingon’s eye, and smiled, and Fingon’s own flesh leaped hopefully in response. The ragged dark red hair that had had to be cut short to get rid of the filth and tangles was growing out again. Fingon leant over and ran his fingers through it, and then down Maedhros’s body, circling his nipples and his stomach. Maedhros caught his hand. “That tickles!” he protested, and pulled Fingon down on top of him. 

Fingon kissed him on the mouth again, then once he had done that for a while, he turned his attention back to the nipples, which had become interestingly hard. Maedhros panted and pushed up delightfully when he licked them. Then Maedhros’s hand came around his buttock and pulled him in closer until Fingon was pushing against his thigh. It was better without the breeches in the way; Maedhros was warm, and between his legs, under his balls, almost hot to the touch. 

Fingon’s heart was racing. He reached down and took Maedhros’s cock in his hand. The skin was very smooth and a heat pulsed in it that felt very different from touching himself. Maedhros threw his head back and shuddered at his touch. He looked even more beautiful, like that. 

Fingon straddled him, careful to avoid the injured arm, and pushed between Maedhros’s warm thighs, breathing hard and biting his own lip so he would not gasp too loudly. Then Maedhros looked up at him, and that strange bright shock went through him again, as he met Maedhros’s eyes, and saw the truth of him there. 

He leant forward to bite at Maedhros’s lip instead of his own, as he thrust, panting, again, again, still holding on to Maedhros’s cock between their bodies. Maedhros’s thighs gripped him firmly, too thin but strong, and oh, but that was good. 

He could feel Maedhros’s spirit opening to him as he moved, gold as Laurelin inside, hot and bright and full of a fierce clear light for Fingon to warm himself by. Fingon laughed with joy and opened his own spirit wide, urging Maedhros to come inside and join with him. 

Maedhros’s breath was hot and fast against his ear as his mind folded around Fingon’s, like a flame, but one that did not burn. Fingon gasped at the brilliance and warmth of it. He wrapped himself back around Maedhros, lacing his mind through Maedhros’s mind and the fingers of his other hand through Maedhros’s fingers, and held on tight, as his spirit flared in delight and his body came at last between Maedhros’s thighs. Maedhros followed almost at once, spurting across Fingon’s hand.

Afterwards, Fingon slipped off him and went to wash his hands. Maedhros did not move. He lay back on the bed, eyes half-closed. Fingon came back with a cloth so Maedhros could wipe himself clean. He could feel a faint ache in his own arm and shoulder now, if he let himself notice it, the echo of what Maedhros was feeling. 

“You always make things better,” Maedhros said, sounding a little drowsy. 

“So do you,” Fingon told him, sitting next to him on the bed. Maedhros made a protesting noise, and looked up at him, half incredulous, half amused. 

“All right then. Not always! But sometimes. If it wasn’t for you we’d still be glaring at your brothers across the lake and waiting for Morgoth to turn up and take advantage of the division.” 

“If it wasn’t for you, you mean, putting aside all fears and arguments and coming to get me,” Maedhros said. He picked up Fingon’s hand and twined their fingers together again. “I probably shouldn’t have done that, just now.” Fingon raised a sceptical eyebrow, and he laughed. “Well, but your poor father! I’ve inflicted the crown on him and stolen his son without even asking permission, to add insult to injury... I don’t regret it though.”

Fingon laughed too. “Nor do I. Anyway, he’ll be delighted. He’d long given up hope I was ever going to marry. I’m sure he’ll want to have the wedding feast, at any rate. And after thirty years following you across the Ice, dragging all the rest after me... well. I was never going to wed anyone else, was I?” 

“No, I don’t suppose you were,” Maedhros said, sleepily. “I am quite astoundingly lucky.”

Fingon ran his fingers down the side of Maedhros’s face, long familiar and very dear. He reached out and pulled the blankets back over him. “I’ll send a message to your brothers saying you’ll be back this evening. Go back to sleep.”


End file.
